Federal Land Managers Ordered to Ease Limits on Gas and Oil

Published: August 9, 2003

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8—
The Bush administration has directed federal land managers to begin removing obstacles to oil and gas development in parts of five Rocky Mountain states.

Directives issued last week to state directors of the Bureau of Land Management give them the tools to put into effect the administration's longstanding goal of opening the Rocky Mountain West to increased oil and gas development. Offices in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have until Dec. 31 to decide on removing the limits.

''Our overall objective is to ensure the timely development of these critical energy resources in an environmentally sound manner,'' the director of the bureau, Kathleen Clarke, said in a statement.

Environmentalists say the policies are another step in White House efforts to give energy development priority over conservation.

''This policy shifts the land management equation in favor of drilling and automatically assumes that oil and gas production is the top value of public lands,'' said Dr. Pete Morton, a resource economist with the Wilderness Society.

The bureau manages 261 million acres of federal land, most of it in 12 Western states. In April 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy panel made a goal of removing limits on energy development in the Rockies. A month later, President Bush ordered federal agencies to accelerate the completion of energy projects while maintaining safety, health and environmental protections.

A deputy director of the bureau, James M. Hughes, said the policy directives aimed to use new oil and gas figures from the United States Geological Survey. Mr. Hughes, who sent out the directives, said: ''We're saying, 'We've got that report, folks. Let's use it in our land-use plans.' ''

Jim Sims, the executive director of the Western Business Roundtable who was on the staff of Mr. Cheney's energy panel, said the new policies should give managers the flexibility they need to address energy needs in an environmentally sensitive way.

''You can have environmentally sound energy development, and that's what we need to have more of,'' Mr. Sims said. ''A lot of these restrictions and lease stipulations are outdated. Some of them are very, very old, and in the intervening time, production technology has grown by leaps and bounds.''

The geological study released this year found 3.9 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 139 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in five Rocky basins. The report stated that there were no significant restrictions on drilling for 57 percent of the oil and 63 percent of the gas.

The changes focus on regions in the five states with the highest oil and gas concentrations. They include parts of the Green River and Powder River Basins in Wyoming, where the administration has proposed drilling 39,400 coal-bed methane wells; the Montana Thrust Belt; the Uinta Basin and the Ferron Coal Trend in eastern Utah; the Piceanace Basin in western Colorado; and the San Juan Basin in northern New Mexico.

Gail Abercrombie, executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association, said the changes could save time by avoiding duplicate environmental studies and other reviews.

The directives instruct state directors to consider environmental rehabilitation away from drilling as helping the environmental effects.

''They're prepared to sacrifice these areas where they want to go in and drill,'' Sharon Buccino, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. ''The whole purpose of mitigation is to try to limit the impact of the project you're doing.''